123520-i-came-back-after-6-months-the-state-of-this-game-is-sad-page-3
Page 1, Page 2, Page 3 Content And what i mean with change in the sentence you quote is change in population and profit for wildstar. I've played on the PTR and it looks great but that isn't the problem, the game is good but it needs more players. So far with every drop we saw the game getting better and saw players coming back to check it out but after a week it's going down again. Look at the last half year I've only see a decline, half a year ago we had 4 servers active now we are down to 2 pve servers and at least for Jabbit it was not that active like Hazak was before the merge for example. Before the merge we had most likely 2 or 3 servers more populated then Jabbit is now :/ Maybe it's different in the US though, but not in the EU. Lets say it does not inspire confident, i bought a year subscription at launch but i won't buy one now when it ends. Would you buy a year subscription? | |} ---- ---- No payment model change, and the LFG tool is popping pretty dang quickly now. What say you? How is it white knighting to ask for the sources of your information in every thread you state your "facts" in? I have yet to see where you list any real figures. If questioning your motives after asking for sources time and time again is "white knighting", I will just have to chalk it up to a very dedicated trolling effort. | |} ---- |} I'm not sure how you saw fewer people playing this game, maybe if you're sticking on the PVP server since everyone's emigrated, but numbers have been steadily increasing since just before Drop 4. We've gone from people complaining that off hours showing Entity as a ghost town (I have to take their word for it) to Khandi seeing 60 listed just at Academy Corner. And I keep track generally speaking at night, where last night I pegged 131 people at that same area, just the people around Thayd's Academy Corner. Populations are absolutely rising. Well, at least you've come straight out and admitted your intentions and your position. So that the next time you attempt to present yourself as an interested party in Wildstar's success, we can file you under the correct header. | |} ---- not worth the response, be glad he is gone. superiority complex and all. | |} ---- Maybe it's different for the US, but even there you went from 2 servers to 1 now. Don't forget you got a decent boost of population from the people that transfer from PvP to PvE before drop 4 | |} ---- I wasn't even counting them, I was counting the wave we got post Drop-4. Anyway, reports that come to me from Jabbit lately sound even brighter than ours. I don't know that they have a higher population now, but they certainly seem to have more people that queue. | |} ---- I don't understand your confusion. Can I ask what your /played is? I guess I just assumed anyone who plays the game a decent amount has a good understanding of the actual player base and why it's not sustainable. So I can only figure you are a raid logger or do your dailies a day a week or something. That avatar guy is completely right. I mean don't you even see it in these GD threads? It's the same 10-20 people saying the same things over and over again. | |} ---- You aren't even in the top 20 posters today, Leylin... you managed that with only 20 of us? | |} ---- Not sure which reports you mean, so far i've only peak after a big update for a week or 2 and then see a decline It helped that WS had 2 good upgrades in a row but now it's back to what it was before the drop i think, at least it feels like that. | |} ---- Long enough to make valid claims? not relevant Vic... | |} ---- What I don't understand, is how this had anything to do with what you quoted. Am I a raid logger? Well, I log on in the evenings because I work during the day, but I only raid 2 days a week. We don't raid Mondays, but I was on, had about a 2 minute dungeon queue, and generally see a ton of people around the cities. Much more than I did about a month ago. Which is just as anecdotal as saying the population is declining, but I'm also not making claims about actual figures. Is asking for evidence for a claim too much to ask? | |} ---- lol cause I don't spam post in silly threads like this where there's just a lot of huff and puff that never solves or fixes anything. Just serves to justify some people's delusions cause the 10 ppl who spam GD more than playing the game seem to share the same opinion or something. | |} ---- Maybe not, but it would only take two clicks to see that just today there are quite a bit more than even his mos optimistic estimate. It does say a bit about the value of his anecdotal population claims. He's already undervaluing the population. If he really thought there were even only 10-20 people on the forums, he should be on that list once he posted. | |} ---- the only way for wildstar to be successful is to go F2P or Hybrid. unless they want to pull of an EvE style slow rise to success but i think that given the lighter and shallower (compared to EvE) style of game and also by being a themepark there is no way that patience and slow rise can be sustainable in a sub fee environment. they need to milk wildstar ASAP. | |} ---- Academy Corner dipstick checks have raised the general population by a good bit on Entity Exiles (where I can reliably check). By around Drop 4 (when I started checking the tool), we were creeping up towards 100 people on a weekend night. We were at over 130 last night at 9pm. So not only is the population rising, but that's just the people who came to down to craft/shop. Those aren't usually the starter people limited to tier 1 professions and who aren't going to stick around. | |} ---- No, you don't understand. Obviously, you are resorting to hyperbole and can't really be trusted because I can actually check to see that there are indeed more than your absolute ceiling for participation here. And if you're undeniably miscounting the population here, why should we trust your view of the broader in-game population? Somehow, I don't think "milk Wildstar ASAP" is the game we want to be around for. I'd rather do that slow rise to success thing you mentioned. I'm not really interested in being "milked". | |} ---- slow rise to success won't happen because of what i mentioned; themepark, lighter game, shallower. might work for Eve (deep, probably too deep..., sandbox) or for Wow (because it was the first themepark as we know them), but Wildstar isn't different enough for that to happen. so, get ready for the milking :) | |} ---- 1. i thought you were leaving 2. why do you even come here? | |} ---- You REALLY don't like Wildstar do you. | |} ---- everytime i log into Thayd i recognize half the players. that is NOT normal. | |} ---- i love wildstar. don't get me wrong. but i have my opinion of what is best for it. | |} ---- -VicVanMeter 2015 | |} ---- Having NCSoft milk the game while they can is "what's best" for a game you love? | |} ---- Successful might be a big word, i do hope it last for a lot longer since i'm enjoying it. Problem is there is quite a long list with good MMO's that is coming up that are worth a try and they all are free to play. I assume many will try them out and if they like it then what kind of reason do they have to subscribe again for wildstar? I'm pretty sure a large group of those players would still play wildstar occasionally when there would not be an subscription. I think that's how MMO work these day, play it with a community over several games. I currently log into Guild Wars 2 if they are looking for someone to do Dungeons or PvP with and i'm enjoying my time there and i'm glad i can still play it but i will not pay any subscription for it... i did actually bought some store items though >> Now starting out adventuring Blade and Soul and must say i'm really liking it, i might buy things for that game. | |} ---- Actually... you have a quest to go there when you hit lvl 13~15, something you easily do within the free trail period. So no that is not a way to check server population I believe. | |} ---- Because it might mean the game survive for longer then a year. If we look at the quarter figures I believe they calculated wildstar had 40,000 subscription around the end of last year. Do you think that number went up or down world wide? | |} ---- I think it went up. But could easily be swayed to say it went down or stayed the same if I saw some data. | |} ---- ---- ---- I actually resubbed after a long hiatus and have been in and out of the game since coming back. I think many have done the same, but back to this quote. 18m/yr for development and upkeep of an MMO and it's future patches/content isn't really enough, I'm sure NCsoft is putting more financing behind Carbine, but *if* (and this is pure hypothetical) it was to be self-sustaining purely on subs/cashshop/credd) 18m would result in low to very little content updates for a game of this size. Wildstar has tons of potential, but it feels (IMO) stifled by the old style of leveling/questing and story-telling. It was just "more of the same" for me when I was playing it before (and to a certain extent, even now when I play, it's only for a short while, because the constant barrage of fetch quests and kill quests just get boring). While it's improving with each update (shiphands, etc) I kind of wish they had looked at games like SWTOR (from a story perspective) or GW2 (for a questing perspective) to shake things up a little. In my opinion, I think Wildstar could do well with a B2P option, with a subscribe option for those who want extras (e.g like Tera has currently, although they're F2P). Buy the game, have a storefront with exp boosters, pets, mounts (pets and mounts are huuuuge sellers, argi a 10$ pet made over 1.9m alone for the red cross from the WoW shop), cosmetic items (costumes etc), as well as a subscription option for those who want extra bonuses (more gold/exp per kill, extra bank/bag space, maybe a third spec available...etc.). As long as they didn't put any form of paywall behind content or items (like SWTOR does or other F2P games do) it would create a fair and even playspace for the players to play how they want. | |} ---- They have 55 pets in PTR, it wouldn't be too hard to throw some of them in a shop right, and then all the costume and xp pots they could be able to sell, throw in some special mounts and maybe in the future a special house. There is so much cosmetic content they can make. Beside that NCsoft has experience with cash shops and they all seems to do very well. | |} ---- Eve is 12 years old, and has had more than 20 major content patches added. Of COURSE it's deeper than WS, it's had a whole lifetime to develop it. | |} ---- Eve is a completely different type of mmo aimed at a different demographic so they can pretty much do with they like with it and people will stick with it. WildStar on the other hand is another theme-park mmo aimed at the WoW demographic but with less content & systems, but better combat and housing. They can't just expect people to stick around and stay subbed as they build up the game while other theme-park mmos are releasing massive content patches/expansions and whatnot. Especially not when they're asking players for the same price each month as the other big mmo but only giving them a third of the game. Square Enix are smart though, they know that their game isn't as big as WoW so they don't charge players as much to play, additionally the amount of content they release every three months is staggering so the sub is truly worth the money. | |} ---- If they have to "milk" the player base to keep the game alive, then it's not really good for the game. It might be good for NCSoft, but it's not good for me. You'll never convince me that turning the game into something I don't want to play is a god thing. | |} ---- And then this stuff is inaccessible to me unless I want to fork out cash? | |} ---- Why so happy proclaiming the death of a game to those of us for whom this is a dealbreaker? | |} ---- You know, I play this game most evenings and there are still areas in this game I've hardly touched. My raid group is 2/6 in GA, so we have a TON to look forward to in our future. I've actually been happy with it the whole time, but it keeps getting better and better, and they keep adding stuff for me to do. Maybe the issue is that I haven't played WoW since WotLK, but the content available to me now in this game feels like what was available to me then, and really I just don't have time for more. I barely even touched the Defile zone and haven't done squat with housing. And I don't think I'm alone in feeling satisfied by this game. I've been watching my wife level and alt, and she met some folks while questing who invited her to their guild. Appears to be a bunch of levelers playing the game casually, and they are running a bunch of shiphands and stuff together. They are playing a totally different segment of the game than where I focus, and they seem to be having a blast. So there isn't just a lot of content for what *I* like to do, but for many others as well. | |} ---- See it's quite opposite for me. I've played most of the other modern mmos, so when I play WildStar it's more like "oh, this game doesn't have this feature" or "I wish I could do that like I can in 'x' other mmos". In some cases it's missing really basic features like being able to group for multiple things simultaneously which is pretty much a standard feature in all of the other AAA mmos. Just this missing feature alone is doing a ludicrous amount of damage to the levelling and endgame instanced content wait times. With that in mind, I don't really feel that this game warrants its high sub fee. (I'm only subbed right now to support CS, since I barely play the game atm.) I know there are some people that are happy with the game, have been happy with it since day one and probably will until the day it dies, but then there are other players like myself that just try all of the current mmos and stick with the one they like the most. I want to like this one the most because I love the lore, love the combat, love almost everything about it except for the mandatory sub, the slow content pace and the lack of players. If they could fix two-out-of-three of those I would be happy. | |} ---- ---- ---- ---- According to Gaffney, Donatelli and Frost, new content every month is how Carbine justified charging a monthly fee. That's really more of the issue people have with the game than whether new content every 3 months is standard or not. Granted, things developers say pre-launch should be taken with a grain of salt, but when they say things like "the era of waiting 3-6 months and then doing a big update is kind of over" and “If you are going to sell an MMO for the box price with a $15 subscription you’ve got to give them the value. Month after month we will release more content for every play style,” and then slow down the new content to every 3 months, while keeping the business model the same, people are going to have something to say about it. | |} ---- dont worry, it fell flat. it will go f2p. that aside, why not milk the real fan for 1 year of sub money in the process of "tweaking" your game ? eso and swtor did the same. its all part of the master plan. | |} ---- ---- If there was a "master plan", they wouldn't have offered name reservations for pre-orders, only to require everyone to change their names a few months after launch. | |} ---- ---- Well if you don't pay now then the whole game is inaccessible ;) In short the problem with subscription is that you get attach to it so to say, you must have it now and all the time you play it and in the future when you want to play the game. And that is game time ticking away... With cash shop, it's more a spur of the moment kind of investment with no strings attach so it's a safer investment in a way. But yeah it's hard to get a good balance of things that you need in game and things that you don't need but want that doesn't effect the game play, so far NCsoft has done it quite well. | |} ----